Children’s Garden Activities

Host: Gary Bachman, Ornamental Horticulture Specialist

Transcription:

Getting children interested in the garden this summer will help develop a lifelong appreciation today on Southern Gardening. 

Children are more likely to appreciate the garden and the larger environment if they get firsthand experience.  And who knows they may get hooked! But this involves making gardening fun.  Here are a few ideas. 

Try letting them plant their initials with flowering bedding plants.  Of course they will have to care for and water their plants.  Or let them use seeds of lettuce and radish.  These sprout quickly and they are also edible.  What a great way to introduce the subject of where their food comes from.  And that it takes a lot of work to feed everyone. 

If you have been to the Land Pavilion at Disney World no doubt you have the molded Mickey shaped pumpkins and cucumber.  The kids can do this at home with cucumber already growing in the garden.  Using a 20 ounce plastic bottle stick a tiny cucumber fruit (still attached to the vine of course) in the bottle, shade with some cucumber leaves.  The cucumber will grow and eventually fill the bottle.  Carefully cutting away the bottle will reveal a soda shaped cucumber. 

Using a bamboo a-frame having 6 poles the kids can have bean races.  Each child plants three or four beans at the base of a pole.  Each day they can measure how far their beans have grown.  They can also count and weigh the beans produced from their plants.  A little friendly competition and a meal. 

Fun garden projects for kids only takes a little imagination like making a scarecrow or planting flowers shaped like a flag.  I am horticulturist Gary Bachman for Southern Gardening.